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Graves Build Guide by

[Gold 1] Graves guide, an unexpected return[5.20].

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21 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author zD Candy

Graves Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion (21) More Graves Guides

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Voted -1

Update to new items pls.

(1) |

@Eranae
This really nice of you I corrected it and modified Soraka pros/cons. Thanks for the feedback !

Voted +1

Hello there!
Thanks for the overall good guide, really helpful, especially when one is new to graves and / or is dealing with him when on the same team while playing support.
A small correction in regards to Soraka though: Soraka can't heal herself with her W, she can only heal allies with said ability, while her Q gives her back her own health if it hits the enemy. Since W is insanely mana effective, most Soraka players will get by with only 1 mana pot and 3 HP pots / biscuits which they'll use to keep their own health up if using Q on the enemy is too mana intensive / too risky. And a small warning (although I guess everyone here knows ^^): Sona's W (her heal) is incredibly ineffective at the start and has a nasty cooldown. It should not be counted on to save your life too much.
Thanks again and best regards :)

Voted +1

Great guide for the entry level player.

Voted +1

thanks for the guide.... i'll try this champ

Voted +1

Nice guide. Please add more matchups if possible. Thanks!

(218) |

Voted +1

;)

(218) |

-Emikadon's Review Shop-

Presentation (9/20 points)

> Cheat Sheet: 3/5 points

I really like how you have notes for everything. Like, you have notes not only for each item set (except for the B.F. Sword one, but you expand on that later, so that's okay) but you have them for the runes and the skill sequence as well. Good job!
On the other hand, your cheat sheet is very poorly structured :/ You have a lot of blank, wasted space after each set that can easily be fixed into just 3-4 rows. What I would do is take out the Health Potion in the "First Back Behind" and add the mention of it in the notes. This way, the "Core" items will be bumped up and take up some space there. Play around with it and try and get about 7 items a row, while still keeping everything organized into sets. You'll be surprised at how much better it'll look!
Playing off of the first point, you have notes for each item set, but they're only one or two line explanations :( While it doesn't need to be 10 million paragraphs long, you should mention each item and briefly touch upon the benefits of each.
For example, for your "Damage Item Choices" you can say: BotRK is good against health stacking champions, but BT is better for 1v1 trades and skirmishes. Youmuu's can be taken instead of LW if the enemy doesn't have much armor. Switch out your boots to Zephyr if the game drags on long enough. <- Concise, short, and gets the point across :)
You may want to run a spell check through your notes. I'll touch on this later in the Grammar/Spelling part.

> Chapters: 3/5 points

Most of the stuff in a regular guide is there. Nice!
I would add sections for Early, Mid, and Late game. Early game is not just the ADC last-hitting minions. There's so much more! You can talk about trading, lane momentum, lane positioning, when to push/freeze the lane, taking objectives like Drag/Towers, punishing enemy mistakes, engaging with your support, etc.
Mid game, you can talk about teamfighting (your job as an ADC, positioning, item actives, kiting) and splitpushing (when should you do it, how do you do it, why should you do it?). Both of them are extremely important to learn.
Late game, talk about objective pushing, vision control, making the correct calls, grouping with your team, sieging, so on so on.

> Visuals/Artwork/Coding: 2/5 points

I can see you've put a lot of effort into the coding of this guide and have taken some templates off of Jhoi, so props to you! However, while it's your first time writing a guide, it is not my job to be lenient when it comes to criticism. I adore coding and coming up with various styles, so be prepared. This section is long, lol.
Avoid using a whole bunch of different colors. Throughout the guide, you've utilized red, green, pink, and the automatic yellow when linking to the database (e.g. Graves), and the usage of colors become counterproductive as they now take away from the guide instead of highlight the important points. Stick to a single color (I would recommend either green or red) to emphasize your points, as this'll make it more consistent throughout your writing.
When you put in pictures, add an extra "enter" so that they'll be spaced out from the text. In addition, you can even re-size them by using the code [img=XXX size=XXX]. This way, you can center them, and they won't be obnoxiously large.
For your runes section, I would tidy that up a bit by spacing out each type of rune (mark, seal, glyph, and quint). Separating them will make it much easier to read.
In your mastery section, I love what you did with the "Tier 1|" style. It looks really nice. However, you're using pictures from two different sources...? o_O One of them is a screenshot from the MOBAFire mastery tree and the other is a bigger, more colorful one...? Stick to one source and stay with it. It'll help with consistency.
In your abilities section, just implement the advice earlier with the image re-sizing and spacing and it'll be fine. Same with the Summoner Spells. To be honest, you don't even need pictures for these. Every champion uses them, so that's something you would find in a general guide, not a Graves ADC one.
With your items, again just space it all out. It's super cramped and hard to read at the moment.
For your "Last Item Choices" the Frozen Mallet column is super big while the others are really short. I would take a look at Foxy Riven's Table Guide and glance through the vertical-align section.
I actually love that Match-up section layout. Well done on that! :) You're missing a whole bunch of supports/ADCs though, so I'm just gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a work in progress :P

> Grammar and Spelling: 1/5 points

Spoiler: Click to view

Guide Content and Viability (41/60 points)

> Runes and Masteries: 12/15 points

Runes are great, and I like how you have alternatives to them later in the guide. From my personal experience and feedback from other guide members though, generally a combination of both AD and AS quints work the best. I would take a single AD quint in addition to 2 AS.
You can also mention taking a single crit rune in your marks. Sometimes, a single, lucky crit in the early game can win you a trade, and thereby give you an advantage for the rest of the laning phase. Sacrificing a single AD won't make that much of a difference.
You can mention alternatively masteries as well. I know some people like to run 21/6/3 for the increased mana regeneration or 21/2/7 for the shorter cooldowns on summoner spells.

> Item Choices and Build: 11/15 points

"Starting Items" and "First Buy: Ahead" look fine. However, with your "First Buy: Behind," I rarely find myself taking Vamp Scepter if I have that much gold. Double Doran's Blade already gives you 6% Life Steal, so the additional 10% isn't completely necessary. Instead, I would opt for an early Pickaxe buy, as it'll build into your core item ( Infinity Edge) and it gives 15 more AD than vamp.
Last Whisper isn't a mandatory 3rd item unless the enemy is just stacking, stacking, and stacking armor against you. I usually look at what the enemy team has, and if they have more than 2-3 major armor items (Sunfire, Randuin's, Zhonya's), then I would pick up LW. Otherwise, I like to go the double AD route and pick up BT instead for the huuuge amount of pure burst you can pull off.
While on this topic, I actually prefer BT over BotRK because it synergizes with Graves' incredible amount of burst really well. He already has an AS steroid with Quickdraw and he can kite super easy with a well-placed Smoke Screen. BT has a shield that you can benefit from while trading, in addition to more flat AD.
No mention of Phantom Dancer?
Talk about enchantments, consumables, and potions! What enchantments are good on Graves/ADCs in general? Under what circumstances? Also, be sure to make sure your reader knows that buying wards is a mark of a good player. Wards. Win. Games. Finally, when would you pick up Red pot or Blue pot?

> Skill Sequence and Explanations: 13/15 points

Skill sequence looks perfect to me :)
I like the detail of the explanations of the abilities, but what I don't see enough of is "Tips and Tricks." Are there any ways that you can use the abilities that would give you a slight edge?
For example: You can clear waves quickly by autoattacking them all until they're low, and then finish them all off with a well-timed Buckshot. This saves mana, and let's you clear quickly and efficiently.
You can use your ult's blast range to finish off enemies that are far away from you.
Smoke Screen can be used to escape because the enemy will lose vision of you while they are in the radius.
You neglect to talk about Graves' passive! >:( True Grit is actually what I find Graves to be the most annoying to deal with, because so long as he's CSing, he's almost impossible to poke down as an enemy ADC. This carries over to trades because he has so much armor.

> Gameplay: 5/15 points

As mentioned in the "Chapters" section above, you're almost completely lacking the different phases of the game :/ I read through your CSing section, but you've only vaguely touched upon each concept without much explanations.
For Early Game (see above list): What is a trade? What makes a good trade? How can you swing the creep wave to your advantage? Where should you be standing when you go for CS? Under what circumstances is it better to push the lane to tower? How do you properly slow push the lane? When is it better to freeze the lane? You talked a little about killing Dragon, but are there any circumstances where it is better to get a tower? If so, when?
For Mid Game: What do you do in teamfights? Where do I position myself? Do I stay behind my tanks? Next to my support? What if my support is an engage one ( Leona, Thresh, Braum) and can't peel for me? How do I prevent myself from being locked down? Who should I be focusing down? When do I enter the fight? What if my team isn't suited for teamfight and I want to splitpush instead? How do I do that? When is it good to splitpush? Where and what should my teammates be doing while I go off on my own? Are there any wards I can put down to prevent myself from dying to 3 man ganks? When do I back off?
For Late Game: Do I switch any items out that fall off? How do I prevent myself from getting caught out? When and where should my teammates and I group for that final teamfight?

Bonus (11/20 points)

> Additional Chapters: 2/5 points

You've got some good Synergies and Matchups, but you don't have all of them. You should try and finish them up if you can! Also, it never hurts to add sections like Warding, General ADC mechanics, Orb-walking, Attack-moving, so on.

> Above and Beyond Explanations: 3/5 points

Every now and then, you've got some great explanations going, and it's super in-depth and informative. However, other times you have barely anything (*coughgameplaycough*).

> Above and Beyond Coding/Artwork: 1/5 points

If you want some custom graphics made just for your guide, you can check out the Artist's Corner for some headers/banners to really make your guide stand out. They make a huge difference in terms of organization and professionalism, and pretty much everyone does it for free anyway, lol.

> Positive Attitude towards Me and Other Readers: 5/5 points

Read through the comments and saw you were super willing to listen and improve. If that doesn't earn 5 points, I don't know what does :)

You have a final score of 61/100. Before you get discouraged or anything, I want you to know that I see an amazing amount of potential in this guide. This could easily be one of the top guides for Graves here on MOBAFire if you're willing to put in the work.

The build (for the most part) is good, but there are subtle nuances I feel like you haven't really articulated. In addition, since this is your first guide, I was very lenient in terms of coding/artwork/layout. I would recommend going through top guides around here to get ideas of how to structure your own. If you see something you particularly like, you can always PM the author and ask for permission to use it. I guarantee they'll say yes :)

However, that being said, there are a lot of things that can be improved. Some of it is easy (grammar/spelling/cheat sheet), but the majority of it will be difficult. The explanations need a lot of work, and you basically need to write out the entire Gameplay section. BBCoding is another thing you might need to fine-tune a little, and again, you can just ask other authors like GMD, Foxy Riven, Jhoijhoi, jamespongebob, who are all experts in terms of coding, for help if you need it.

If you fix the things I've brought up, you may request for a re-review, and I will gladly look over it again! If I see improvements, I'll be sure to come back and give you my upvote!